Sanford Freedom Festival gears up for crowds

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, July 2, 2009

Sanford's Village Park began to stir with life Thursday as vendors and organizers started moving in their equipment for the first-ever Freedom Festival, which opens at 11 a.m. today.

Midlander Jenn Joseph fried up some sweet treats - deep-fried Oreo cookies - to see what the advance crew thought of them before introducing this new product to the public today. Joseph and her husband Glen operate King's Kids French Fries, and for this weekend's three-day festival they hope crowds will devour their fries with chili and cheese and the Oreos, which are soft and doughy on the outside and creamy on the inside.

Jenn said she's excited about this new event, especially because it will last three days, while Midland's fourth of July fireworks festivities last one day. Although she doesn't think business will be as brisk as the Midland County Fair, she's happy about three days of work and because "Sanford is putting on something this big."

King's Kids isn't the only vendor preparing to sweeten up the crowd. The Sanford Lions Club will sell hot fudge sundaes and strawberry shortcake. It's been hard to estimate the crowd for an event that's brand-new, but the Lions bought 29 gallons of ice cream, $60 worth of fudge sauce, 500 biscuits, two cases of whipped cream and a bunch of frozen strawberries with the sugar already added.

Vendors will keep some of their proceeds and give part to the festival.

"If we can make 250 bucks, we can buy another kid a pair of glasses," said Lion Bob Burnison.

Burnison and representatives of the Eagles, the American Legion and the public works department sat in a pavilion Thursday afternoon hanging out and talking. While they chatted, the truckload of beer for the "beverage tent" arrived from Fabiano Brothers. Yes, there's beer in this tent, but it also will have pop, water, power drinks and wine coolers. Organizers hope families will relax at the tent because there will be non-alcoholic beverages. The two stages, one for the teen dance in the business district and one for entertainment at the park, hadn't yet arrived.

Kurt Cormier, who owns Sanford's Java Lodge and is president of the festival committee, said the idea for this festival germinated about 18 months ago. Local barbecue celebrity Bill Wall, better known as Billy Bones, is one of Cormier's best coffee-drinking customers, and the two began talking about how to bring people to Sanford and boost the community's economy. The local chamber of commerce had a similar goal, to encourage more businesses to join its ranks and become involved in activities.

"We said 'Let's do something,'" Burnison said. So a few organizers contacted representatives from the Legion, The Lions, the historical society and village council.

Bob Carl of the public works department said he's been attending festival meetings, chasing down whatever the group needed. He convinced about 16 businesses to let the festival share their large trash receptacles, saving a big chunk of money that now doesn't have to be spent to rent them.

Carl said the riverbank has been trimmed of brush for the festival, and his department has continued to take care of the downtown flowers and clean the streets.

Cormier said he recognizes this festival is a big undertaking for Sanford, but by Thursday afternoon he had a certain confidence that the whole big thing is on its way.

"The way I like to described it is that we took a project and we shot for the moon, and we made it to the Empire State Building," he said. "We anticipate that after this one we're going to learn a lot, we're going to grow a lot and next year it's going to be four or five times the festival that it was this year."